


The Dick Ghost and Hercule Poirot

by AlreadyPainfullyGone



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Crack, College Castiel/Dean Winchester, M/M, Stoner Castiel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-03
Updated: 2014-03-09
Packaged: 2018-01-07 08:14:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1117580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlreadyPainfullyGone/pseuds/AlreadyPainfullyGone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU based on a random comment on tumblr. Dean is living in a shared house, in his first semester of college, but he's being dicked around with, literally, by someone who think's it's funny to hide dildos in his stuff. When this starts to interfere with his ability to pick up women, Dean decides to lay down the law with the weirdos he lives with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Lisa comes up to him after class, and Ok, so it’s a little too soon to call ‘best college moment’,  it being the first semester, but Dean’s pretty sure nothing is going to top this.

She leans against the wall next to the vending machine he’s funnelling quarters into and asks, “Hey, do you want to come by mine and study later?”

Dean’s not dumb, he got into college – he knows what ‘come by mine and study’ means. And it does not mean he’s going to be getting any use out of his sociology textbook.

“Sure,” he gives his best ‘we both know what’s going to happen here – and it’s awesome’ smile, and opens his backpack to tuck a soda in there for later.

Lisa looks down, and her eyes widen.

Dean scrunches the top of the bag together and just kind of stands there with his mouth slightly open.

“Was that...”

“It’s not mine.” He blurts.

“Right, so...why do you have a...”

“It’s the dick ghost.”

Now she’s looking at him like he’s in danger of ripping his ears off and eating them right in front of her.

“It’s a thing...it’s one of my housemates, they think it’s funny to...put that, places.”

“Places?” she squeaks.

Not making it better.

“It’s a prank.”

Her eyes return to their normal size and she nods, “Ah, OK, so...one of the guys you live with thinks that’s funny?”

“Yeah. And believe me he’s not going to when I get back tonight.” Dean says through gritted teeth. He has had enough of this crap.

“If you get back,” Lisa says sweetly.

Dean zips the backpack up. “Seriously, when I see those guys, I’m getting to the bottom of this.” He glances up, sees her deflated expression. Way to ruin a moment, moron. “Uh...rain check?”

“Sure.”

 

He spends the whole walk back to his shared house cursing his housemates under his breath, and internally cringing over how things went with Lisa. He’d been distracted, after all, it’s hard to flirt when you’ve got a twelve inch purple dick hanging out of your backpack.

He bets it was Gabriel, or Ash. Both of those guys are serious weird, and they’ve been annoying the living hell out of him since the first night they moved in – Ash with about twenty tons of computer crap which made noise all through the night and made the lights flicker every time someone plugged the toaster in.  Gabriel with his apparently unending one night stand with some very loud, definitely male ‘guest’.

There’s Creepy the basement stoner, but Dean doesn’t actually think he’s seen the guy since the day after orientation. Their soul interaction had been Dean watching warily as the skinny dude, reeking of pot and incense went through the cupboards, took a box of cheerios marked ‘Sam Winchester’s DO NOT EAT’ and nodded a ‘morning’ before disappearing again.

In harem pants.

Yellow ones.

Sam wouldn’t have done it. They’d had a prank embargo on ever since they started at college. They’d agreed to join forces in the face of their annoying housemates, especially Gabriel, who seemed to think that filling the showerhead with coco was some kind of light-hearted trick, rather than a bitch to clean up, and not funny in the slightest.

Slamming the door, Dean looked up the stairs to the second floor, unable to detect sounds of occupation. The threadbare carpet made moving around noiselessly almost impossible. No laptops playing music or video, not even the surreptitious creak of a bedspring.

“I know you’re here, and you’re an asshole for putting that thing in my bag,” Dean shouts experimentally, “We all thought it was funny when it turned up in the microwave, in the toilet – fair enough. But in my car? My protein powder, and now my freaking backpack?”

Ringing silence.

“Fuck,” he sighs. He’ll just have to wait for everyone to come home, Poirot this shit out in the game room.

“It was in your juice too.”

Dean jumps and turns around to find the basement dweller leaning against the doorframe.

“What. The. Hell?”

“I had to pour the juice into a separate container, open the carton into a net, insert the dildo, glue it back together, then pour the juice back in....but you didn’t notice. So, in retrospect, it was a waste of time and aeroplane glue.”

His tongue feels furry. Dildo juice. He might be sick, sicker than last time Sam put baking soda in the meringue on a lemon pie and he’d started foaming at the mouth.

“Why?”

Castiel, Dean remembers his name now, shrugs. “I don’t have a lot of classes at the moment, I got bored.”

“So you decided to act like a freak and try to kill your housemates with dildo poisoning?” Dean throws his bag down. “Not funny.”

“Not all of them. Just you,” Castiel kneels down and opens the bag, removing the dildo and Dean’s soda, like it’s his to take. “And this really is very clean. I’m a stickler for sexual hygiene.” He pops the purple dick under his arm like a rolled up newspaper and opens the soda, taking a long drink.

“Why just me?” Dean says, instead of ‘Hey that’s mine’.

Castiel swallows, “Because it bothers you.”

“It would bother anyone.”

“No, anyone might find it annoying, or embarrassing, you find it insulting on an entirely different level. Mostly because dicks make you uncomfortable.”

Dean blinks. What the fuck has he stumbled into? “I’m a dude. Dicks don’t make me uncomfortable.”

Castiel seems to digest this, then lunges forwards and pokes him in the chest with the dildo.

“What the fuck, get off!”

“See? It’s just a piece of silicone, but you’re getting all squeamish about it.”

“Because it’s probably been up your ass, you freak.”

Castiel’s eyebrows lower in amused incredulity. “So _I_ make you uncomfortable.”

“Right now? YES!”

“And the idea of me having a sex life makes you reeaaaaaaaaaally uncomfortable?”

Why do these things happen to him, and never Sam?

“Just...can you go get high or something? Can we not be having this conversation?”

Castiel shrugs. “Just trying to work you out. No hard feelings.” He pauses. “Would you like some drugs?” He says, like he’s offering him handmade biscotti or a pot of English tea.

“Some drugs?”

“Yes.”

“No, I’m good.”

Again, the carefree shrug. “OK, just being polite.”

And he disappears back into basement land with Dean’s soda, and the dildo.

Dean watches the closed door to the basement for a long time. What the fuck has he stumbled into here? Why couldn’t he have just lived in a two bed with Sam like he wanted? But no, got to get the whole college experience right? Loud housemates, pranks, and freaks with impeccable manners, apart from when it comes to where they leave their sex toys.

As soon as he sees Sam, he’s telling him they have to move. Nothing on earth is keeping him in a house with that freak for another week.

Upstairs, poised and silent like a mime minus the makeup - although, not the striped unitard, for reasons he wasn’t very comfortable with -Sam listens hard for the sound of the front door closing, something to indicate that Dean is no longer in the house. Fortunately, the TV downstairs goes on, and Sam can hear the football game through the floor. He’s pretty sure Dean can no longer hear him.

“Fuck, that was close.”

“You’re telling me.”

Gabriel, halfway across the room, is frozen in the act of reaching for the bathroom door handle, and has been for about ten minutes.

“Why’d you have to live with your brother again?”

“Hey, you live with yours.”

“Yeah, but mine’s barely alert. He’s like a potted plant.” Gabriel gingerly sets his raised foot back on the floor and turns slowly to face Sam. “Can you throw me my pants?”

Same picks up the ball of fabric from the floor and throws it. Halfway through the air, Gabriel’s wallet flys out of the pocket and falls onto the floor.

They freeze.

“Sam?” Dean calls from downstairs, “you home?”

“Run,” hisses Sam, he needn’t have said anything, Gabriel, and the pants, have vanished so swiftly he’s almost surprised to not see a smoke outline hanging in the air.

One day they’ll have to have a sit down and talk about what this thing they have going means. But, until he can tranquillise Dean and leave him in a closet – that day will not come.

His phone flashes with a text, he grabs it from the night stand.

_Loved the unitard btw, nxt time maybe some accessories?_

_I’ll let you climb my invisible rope._

Sam raises his eyebrows until his face actually starts to hurt.

Another text flashes up.

_Wait...that didn’t come out right._


	2. Chapter 2

Dean wakes up early, pads down the hall to the bathroom, and finds his toothbrush taped to a dildo.

It’s a new dildo, pale pink fading to white, sparkling, twisted round like a unicorn horn. The tape is sparkly too. He notes all this as he gives it a death glare so strong that, were it a laser it would go through the wall and kill Ash in his sleep.

He takes the toothbrush off the offending item, shoves it in the sink and blasts it with hot water. The dildo goes in a plastic bag, which he takes with him when he storms downstairs. He opens the door to the basement and throws the bagged up dick down the stairs, listening to each thump as it ricochets down into the semi-darkness, which is lit only by the purple crackle of a static electric filled ball.

“And a good morrow unto you,” comes the scratchy voiced response.

Dean slams the door and goes to find himself a nutritious and fortifying breakfast.

One bowl of Luck Charms and a Red Bull later, he’s on his way to the first class of the day. Intro to psyche is still as boring as rubbing wallpaper paste into white bread, but he’s there, and that’s all that counts until his first paper’s due. In sociology he takes the seat next to Lisa, and she slips him a note asking if he’s still up for a study session.

He most emphatically is.

He spends the early afternoon at Lisa’s dorm, in a make out session that takes at least two layers of skin off of his lips, and all of his self control. Thankfully, he remembers as he gives her one last kiss on the concrete porch, he only has one more class before he can go home and let off a little steam.

It’s his computer skills lab, and he gets to the tiny, underground room where twenty macs are whirring away. It’s a windowless, hot little space and their professor is always late, and never has anything for them but a dull lecture, through which the five students who bothered to show up surf the net, snack and build little games on the piss easy design programmes they’ve started out on.

He hasn’t mentioned the class to Sam, because Sam is pre-law and already has his career mapped out to a seat on the senate and what colour dog he’s going to get when he moves into the white house. But Dean? He really wants to work on games like MOH and COD, all that military shit interests the hell out of him – and not just because it’s the only thing he can talk to his Dad about.

Today there are even less people in the lab than usual. The strung out guy in a hoody and headphones sitting in his usual corner with a pesto salad and six pack of energy drinks, and a triple espresso. Techie nerd guy and girl, who are wearing slogan t-shirts and talking about the new Star Trek movie, and one other person, who waves at him from across the room, and pats the chair next to him.

Dean grits his teeth and goes over to him.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“I take this class.”

“You’ve never been here.”

“Doesn’t mean I don’t take it, just because I don’t go,” Castiel looks like he has no idea why this is such a hard concept to grasp, “this is college.”

“So you’re not just here to fuck with me?”

Castiel looks confused. “Why would my being here matter?”

Dean really wants to hit him, only problem is, Castiel probably weighs about 90 pounds under his baggy no colour pants and tie dye hoody. He’s got painted nails for fucks sake, pink, with little pineapples on them, the same yellow as his Havana sandals.

He stalks to a chair on the other side of the room, logs on, and settles down to work on his text based combat role play game. With his earbuds in and Metallica blasting his head to another level of not giving a shit, he focuses on the sleek screen and ignores everyone in the room.

But it’s too late, Castiel has already ruined everything. He can’t help glancing over at his housemate every few minutes, watching Castiel’s be-fruited fingers tapping at the keyboard as easily as they might play over the surface of a rolling paper. He sticks his tongue out when he focuses, just the tip, pressed into the bow of his top lip. Like he’s a fricking kid doing difficult fractions homework.

Halfway through the session a box of sushi slides down the desk and hits Dean in the elbow. He looks over and finds Castiel nibbling a cucumber roll. Dean does not do raw fish. He slides it back, and Castiel shrugs, helping himself to some kind of pink fish on a lump of rice.

All the good will he’s been fostering since spending those hours with Lisa evaporates in the tense little computer room.  By the end of the class he’s ready to claw a hole in the wall to get away from fucking Castiel-mc-weirdo-monkey-face.

Unfortunately, because they’re heading the same way, he’s unable to shake him.

“Are you enjoying your civil war work?” Castiel asks, keeping up with Dean no matter how fast he walks.

“Mmmhmm.”

“Seems dull.”

His head is starting to ache with the pressure of not committing murder. “It’s not. Not to me.”

Castiel just lets it hang there, the accusation of dullness. Dean tries, he really does, but can’t help the words coming out.

“It’s a really integral part of our history, and I’m making it available in an educational format, which allows for real choice and freedom for the player, in a way that modern fps games just don’t. And anyway, what’s so special about what you’re working on?”

They’ve stopped, he realises. Well, he stopped, so Castiel copied him. “And while we’re on the subject of what the hell you’re up to, did we not have a conversation yesterday about you keeping your sex stuff away from me?”

“Well, you told me to. That doesn’t mean I have to.” Castiel points out, “and as for the game, it’s Zebra Maddness, and it’s awful, but it’s based on Japanese game shows, and dystopian ideals of personal freedom and the inevitable fall of capitalism.”

Dean just looks at him. “Are you  wearing glitter right now?”

“Just a sprinkle,” Castiel shrugs, “I like glitter.”

Dean clenches his hands at his sides. “So this whole shtick you’ve got going...the, ‘I’m gay as fuck’ thing? Exactly when in your Lady Gaga marathon did that seem like a good idea?”

Castiel tips his head on one side. “I don’t understand what you mean.”

“Forget it.” Dean takes a step around him. “Just, don’t talk to me, don’t go near my stuff and try not to get your glitter anywhere near me.”

As he walks away, he’s gratified to notice that Castiel is not following him.

He is less gratified the next morning, when three butt plugs fall out of his Luck Charms box.

Sam looks at them and sighs, pouring non-fat milk over his cheerios. “Let me guess, you’re not getting on with Castiel?”

Dean takes the whole bowl to the trash can and dumps it in. “What the fuck is his problem? It’s like he’s on the My Little Pony Spectrum, and why is this not happening to you? When you’re the one who insisted we live like this?”

Sam, used to Dean’s tirades against humanity, dug into his cereal and waited for Dean to sit down before giving him a talking to. By that time, Dean had been through every exchange he’d had with Castiel, and had blown out enough hot air to lift the house into orbit.

“First off, we both wanted to live here. You said it would be cool to meet other guys our age, and make new friends.”

“That doesn’t sound like me.”

“You said it in front of Dad, so, it was probably a lie, but still. Those words. Your mouth.”

Dean rolls his eyes.

“Second, the dick prank played out with me, and everyone else, because we laughed. It was funny. We didn’t take it as a personal assault on our manliness.”

Dean’s look could have burnt bacon. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Sam sighed. “It means, you’re threatened by it, by him. By the pranks, and by the way he acts, the way he talks to you. He’s not bothered about what other people might think of him.”

“Neither am I!”

“Dean, that’s all you worry about.”

Dean just stares at him. What the hell is he talking about?

“I don’t care what people think.”

“Oh really? So...why’d you give up cheerleading for football?”

Dean rolls his eyes. “Because I grew up and football is cool.”

“Or because guys on the team started giving you shit about it, and you had to prove they were wrong.”

“Like it matters what they think.”

“It doesn’t. Only you care whether-”

“Whether what?”

Sam took a deep breath. “Whether people think you’re as gay as me.”

Dean stares at Sam for a full minute, and, when Sam stands and takes his breakfast things to the counter, Dean stares fixedly at the toaster oven until Sam’s head replaces it.

“Since when?” He asks, finally.

“Since birth.”

Dean glares.

“Since just before we graduated. I thought maybe I was before then but...that was when I was sure.”

“And you think I care about stuff like that?” Dean demands, “that’s why you didn’t tell me?”

“You’re telling me you don’t care?” Sam asks.

“No. I don’t care.” Dean leans back in his chair, looking and feeling suddenly very tired. “You’re still a dork and you’re never gonna get laid.”

“I get laid.”

“Bullshit.”

“More than you.” Sam assures him, “I get laid like linoleum.”

“Crooked?”

Sam can’t keep a straight face anymore, and neither can Dean. But one thought sobers him.

“I think I may have hurt Cas’s feeling yesterday.”

“How?”

“I kind of said he was a...Lady Gaga supergay freak.”

Sam glares at him.

“He was wearing glitter!”

“It is a free country Dean.”

“Oh yeah, and I suppose when we go home for Christmas you’ll be piling on the glitter to go see Dad?”

The look on Sam’s face is enough to make Dean want to cut out his own tongue.

“Sorry.”

“No, you’re right. Dad probably won’t like it. But you matter more...so, can you just please find a way to be OK with this? Whether I’m still wearing the same old plaid or a Carmen Miranda headdress?”

“OK...I will.”

“Then you can start by apologising to Castiel, and maybe trying to be a little more friendly.”

Dean nods, because, if it makes Sam happy, he’ll become Castiel’s BFF.


	3. Chapter 3

After eating a bowl of Sam’s cheerios and washing his dishes, Dean ventures to the basement door and knocks on it. There’s no response.

That of course means nothing, Castiel is probably asleep, or high, or just not in the talking mood. Any one of about a thousand reasons why he wouldn’t answer a knock. Dean sighs, and eases the door open.

The stairs down to the basement are uncarpeted, with rubber treads nailed to them. They creak and complain as he descends, and at the bottom of them he squints into the gloom cast by several hundred glow in the dark stars, which are tacked to the ceiling, but also the walls and floor.

A dark mass in the far corner appears to be Castiel’s bed, and Dean edges towards it.

“Castiel? You awake?”

A muffled groan answers him. Dean gets close enough to see a lava lamp on the table next to the bed and switches it on. Pale, purplish light spills out between bits of glitter. A hand protrudes from under a mess of zebra patterned sheets and swats at the light source.

“Can we talk for a minute?” Dean asks, moving the lava lamp out of reach.

Castiel’s ruffled head emerges, squinting against the glow. “I was dreaming about the chamber of commerce.”

“Oh...super.”

“You were there...you’d lost a million dollars in my couch and I didn’t want to help you look for it.”

“Understandable.” Dean really just wants to say his piece and get gone already.

“Are you mad?”

“It was your dream.” Dean tugs back the covers a little way, hoping some cold air will improve Castiel’s mental faculties. “Look, about yesterday, on the way back from class...I was an asshole.”

Castiel nods, eyes still closed to slits.

“You were right, the whole dick thing makes me uncomfortable and...I’m not great when it comes to people or things that are...out of the ordinary. I’m sorry for going off on you.”

“You said I was too gay – I still don’t understand.” Castiel lifts himself upright and runs a hand through his already dishevelled hair. There’s a tiny pink heart tattooed just over his left nipple. Dean blinks at it, then glances back at Castiel’s face.

“It’s just, with the glitter and the yellow pants, the dildos, the...lava lamp...you’re a very, out, gay guy.”

Castiel cracks a smile, a wide, almost unhinged smile that makes Dean worried that he’s going to open his mouth wide and swallow him whole. “Did you know, that my name is the name of an angel.”

“O...K.”

“Not a very important angel, only mentioned in the Bible once, and you know, I’m sure he was great, and tried hard, but he’s not really one of the ones they put on church walls and make statues of.” Castiel shrugged, “I guess like Leonardo never gets an Oscar, anyway, the point is, do you know why I’m named after an angel?”

“Why?”  Dean is starting to think this was a mistake, but hey, they’re talking at least.

“Because my family is Amish.” Castiel says, as if this explains everything.

“So, you’re really, really, really gay...because your family are...strict? It’s like a rebellion thing?” Hey, maybe he is Poirot after all.

“No.” Castiel shoves the sheets away, and pads across the room, naked (another tattoo on the small of his back, this one, a dolphin with wings) picks up his static orb and brings it back, putting it in Dean’s disbelieving hands before sitting on the unmade bed, lotus style.

“Dean, for the first 18 years of my life, I wore brown pants, every day. I lived without electricity, without cartoons, without convenience food and popular music. And now I’m out here, in the world. And the world had yellow pants, and plushies, and lava lamps. It has drugs and heavy metal and lucky charms, and lego, and about a hundred thousand other things that I want to have seen and experienced before...before I go back.”

“Go, back?”

“I made a deal with my family. I could go to college, study whatever I wanted, but at the end of four year, I would be going home, to them, to take care of them and the farm.”

It says a lot about Dean’s state of confusion that he willingly sat down next to a naked dude on a zebra bedspread.

“But...you’re gay.”

Castiel nods. “And I’m also the youngest of six brothers, all of whom, have left my parents and their way of life for one reason or another. It’s the reason they were willing to make a deal with me. Nicolas because he fought with our father, Michael because he couldn’t forgive our family for casting Nicolas out. Alfred, he was paralysed in an accident and now lives with his wife, and former nurse, in Pasadena, and Balthazar...I haven’t heard from in five years. As for Gabriel, he left after Nick because he couldn’t take the infighting and family conflict...and I would never ask him to return. ” He shrugs, then perks up. “I take it Sam told you.”

Dean, sucked out of the black hole of Castiel’s future, emerges into the purple-green glow of Castiel’s present. “Yeah...he told me.”

“That’s good. I was hoping he and Gabriel would come into the open. He makes Gabriel so happy...it’s been pleasant to witness.”

Dean feels like he’s trying to swallow a cotton ball.

“Dean?”

“Gabriel and Sam?”

Castiel bites the corner of his lower lip. “Oops.”

Dean is off the bed and halfway to the door when Castiel tackles him. Castiel might be small, but he’s wiry, and Dean wasn’t expecting to be pushed to the ground. They land with a thump that winds him, and he rolls onto his back, where Castiel secures his hands and sits astride him.

“I think you need a moment to process before running off.”

“I’m processed. I’m calm .”

“You have murder all over your face, and fratricide in your eyes,” Castiel informs him.

“I have naked guy on me,” Dean says, mostly to himself.

“We already agreed that you were sorry for your rudeness, and that you were accepting of my glitter and life choices.”

“We didn’t agree you could sit on me.”

“So it is still a problem for you?” Castiel looks genuinely upset.

“Stop trying to distract me from killing your brother!”

“Stop being intimidated by my nakedness.”

“I am not intimidated. You’re not intimidating.” Dean growls.

Castiel leans forwards until they’re nose to nose. “I can be.”

Dean swallows, tries to keep a menacing look on his face. “Still not working.”

Is it him, or is it too hot in the basement? They really need to sort out their crappy thermostat.

Castiel, thankfully, stands up and pulls Dean to his feet. “No murder.”

Dean would turn and make a break for Gabriel and a sharp implement, but Castiel is still holding his hand. “Can I have that back?”

“Not until you prove we’re OK. That you’re not freaked out by me, and by extension, my theoretical homosexual brethren...and my actual homosexual brother. And yours.”

“By...”

“Give me a hug.”

Dean glares. “I am not hugging you, you’re naked...and you smell like kiwis.”

“If you can hug a naked man, hugging a clothed one will be so much easier, and you’ll be free and secure in your heterosexuality, by knowing that you were not in the least effected by my nakedness.”

He is going to murder Gabriel, and at least maim Sam. The sooner he hugs, the sooner he gets to find a big knife and a potato peeler.

“Fine.” He takes a step and puts his arms around Castiel, who remains motionless as Dean pats him awkwardly on the back and then steps away. “There. That OK?”

Castiel shrugs. “It’s not about me. Now, go and talk – calmly- to your brother.”

Dean turns and sprints up the darkened stairs.

“No homo!” Castiel calls after him cheerily.

 


	4. Chapter 4

Dean bursts into Gabriel’s room and finds the brotherfucker in the act of putting up a poster of gangbanging gummibears.

“You!” he yells, “You, and SAM!?”

Gabriel turns to face him, dropping a roll of tape to the floor. “Ah...Ok, I knew this day was gonna come.” He raised his hands, took a deep, steadying breath and a step backwards, “can we talk about this, you know, man to man?”

Dean takes a step forwards, “I’m going to cut you in half.”

“Oh...Ok...SAMMY!”

Dean dove for him as thundering footfalls came from below.

He had Gabriel cornered when Sam launched himself at his back, dragging his backwards and dropping him on the floor. There was a short scuffle, and between them, Gabriel and Sam managed to keep him down, with Gabriel perched on Dean’s chest.

“Why are so many dudes sitting on me today!” Dean struggled, but couldn’t throw either of them off.

“Dean, calm down.” Sam said, “I get it, you’re shocked, but, Gabriel and I genuinely like each other, and we’ve been waiting for the right moment to tell you.”

“Sam’s been waiting, I’ve been dreading,” Gabriel put in.

“Why the hell are you,” Dean shook his head, “I don’t want to know. I don’t want to see it. Just...can I pretend it isn’t happening?”

“I thought you were OK with me?” Sam looked so devastated that Dean stopped trying to kick him off and sighed.

“I’m OK with you being gay, but Gabriel, seriously? The most annoying, thoughtless asshole on campus? And he’s not even good looking. You can do better.”

Gabriel glowered, and Sam patted him on the back. “You’re very attractive.”

“I know,” Gabriel snapped, “I _have_ eyes.”

“Seriously Sam, did he tell you he’s the reason Cas is going to have to go back to some Amish village where no one is going to care about him, because he’s gay and likes glitter?”

“What?” Sometimes Sam was fairly certain that Dean’s brain ran on two separate tracks, and sometimes they didn’t quite match up. Sort of like when he’d tried to build a model railway and caused a ten train pile up and a small fire.

Gabriel pinched the side of Dean’s neck, hard. “Don’t be an ass. You think I’m going to let him go back there?”

“But he said...”

“I lied butt-nipple! I’m a liar, it’s what I do. Castiel is a good kid, but there’s no way he can live the way we grew up, so I told him a little lie, and said he should tell Mom and Dad that he wanted to get a degree, and that he’d come back and take care of them after. He’s got four years to work out how to tell them he’s not coming back.”

“But he’s still determined to go back,” Dean said.

“Then I’ve got four years to convince him not to.” Gabriel growled. He froze and glanced down. “Please tell me that’s a pen.”

“It’s mints,” Dean growled, finally managing to struggle out from under his brother’s asshole fuck buddy.

The three of them exchanged glances, warily attempting to assess the situation.

“So are we....good?” Sam said, finally.

“No.” Dean and Gabriel said as one.

“You’ve still been an ass to my brother,” Gabriel pointed out.

“And you’ve still had yours on my brother.”

Gabriel raised his eyebrows. “Aww, you think he’s a top.”

Dean closed his eyes. “Images I don’t want. Images I can’t have.”

“Sometimes he dresses like a mime.” Gabriel continued.

“Oh God...why?” Dean opened his eyes to glare at his brother, who had turned the same colour as a ruptured testicle.

Gabriel had taken his chance while Dean wasn’t looking, and bolted from the room.

“He thinks mimes are sexy.”

Dean just stared.

“Something about tight leotards and messed up grease paint.”

Dean shook his head. “You can never use Rhonda Hurley against me again. You understand that?”

Sam nodded.

“Come here you weirdo,” Dean gave him an awkward one armed hug. “Just, keep your boyfriend on a leash and we’ll call it settled, for now.”

“Thanks, you know, for not murdering him.”

“I’m not making any promises.”

Downstairs, they found Castiel (thankfully now wearing a pair of dinosaur boxers and a vest) brewing tea and talking to Gabriel, who was pouring a bowl of the lucky charms Dean had thrown out.

“I was just asking Castiel how he was getting along, seems like ages since we last saw each other,” Gabriel said, patting Castiel on the shoulder.

“It’s going well,” Castiel said, “I’ve started a list of things I’d like to do over winter break.”

“Like what?” Sam asked.

“Like Vegas,” Castiel shrugged, “and camping out in a national park, and going to the zoo, swimming with dolphins, learn to bake a cake, have a birthday party.”

“Your birthday’s over Christmas?” Dean asked.

Castiel gave him a weird look. “It’s in September.”

“Oh, shit. Happy Birthday!” Gabriel said.

Castiel didn’t seem that upset. “And Disneyland. I want to see Disneyland.”

“Oh, that’d be trippy,” Gabriel looked at Sam, “we could have a three way with the genie from Aladdin.”

“Really, that’s where your mind went?”

“Hey, that’s been the dream ever since I saw that movie.”

Sam nudged his brother. “Didn’t you always want to go to Disneyland?”

“No. Shut up.”

“I remember, you asked Dad every year until you about ten. Something about wanting to meet Tarzan?”

Dean flushed. He’d had kind of a hero worship thing going on ever since he saw that movie. Seriously, dude could swing by his toes. His toes!

“Maybe I did,” he admitted.

“So, we could all go,” Sam concluded.

Castiel brightened. “That would be fun. I should however finish watching all the movies first, otherwise I doubt I’ll appreciate the experience in its entirety.”

“What do you have left to go?” Dean asks.

Castiel shrugs, “Everything after snow white.”

Dean nudges his brother. “Sam, get your laptop.”

“Why can’t you just...you broke it with porn, didn’t you?”

Dean looked sheepish. “Yeah...I can’t turn that thing on again, it was like looking into hell.”

“But I need to work on my paper,” Sam turned to Gabriel.

Gabriel avoided his eye.

“You too?”

He nodded.

Sam sighed. “You know, if you want to watch porn you could just buy it.”

“I’m already paying for an education that’s worth less than nothing, I’m not paying for ass,” Gabriel said.

“Cas?”

Castiel frowned. “I don’t have a laptop. But I do have a calculator and a pocket organiser that came with some notepads.”

Sam sighed and went to get his computer.

“Sweet, marathon,” Dean went to the cupboards. “Snacks, and we’re gonna need beer.”

“I’ll go get some,” Gabriel grabbed his jacket and slipped out the door, not wanting to be around Dean while Sam wasn’t there to act as a human shield.

“Cas, can you cook?”

“I can make butter and grind corn.”

Dean turned and threw him the box of brownie mix. “Great. You’re over qualified.”

“I don’t think this is actually food,” Castiel said, reading the back of the box, “most of this stuff sounds like a breed of lizard, or an ancient name for satan. What is a lycolglucosate?”

Dean shrugged. “No idea. But Sammy lived off of that stuff when we were kids so, it definitely doesn’t stunt your growth.”

Castiel opens the box and looks at the package of brown dust sceptically. “I saw on television that you can put drugs in brownies.”

“How about we stick to some peanut butter?”

Castiel stuck his tongue out. “Disgusting.”

Dean rolled his eyes and went to the fridge for eggs. Castiel mixed up the batter and poured it into the fiddly tray that came with the mix. Dean poured nuts into a bowl with cheese shapes and opened a can of soda.

Sam came clattering down the stairs just as Dean noticed the streak of chocolate goo on Cas’s forearm.

“Dude, might want to get that.”

Castiel glanced down, lifted his arm, and licked along its length.

Sam watched Dean blink, glance away, then look back and swallow.

“You...uh....you could get salmonella,” Dean said lamely.

Castiel shrugged. “It tastes good.”  He wipes a finger around the bowl and holds it out. “See.”

Dean looks at the chocolate on Cas’s fingers for a moment longer than seems strictly comfortable, and Sam coughs.

“I’m good,” Dean says, startled. “I’ll go...uh...get some...” he walked past Sam and went upstairs.

Castiel licked the mixture from his fingers, shrugged, and put the bowl in the sink. “What movies are there to watch? Did Disney make many more after Snow White?”

Sam sat down and started his computer. “A few, yeah.”

Whatever was going on between Castiel and Dean, it was clearly past dildo pranks, and well into something that was clearly making Dean a whole lot more uncomfortable.

And Sam was all for that.

 

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

Dean woke up in the dark with a hand on his arm and a piece of popcorn lodged in each nostril.

Panicked, he sat up on the couch, pinched the obstruction from his nose and threw it onto the floor.

“What the fuck?” He said, to Castiel, who was sitting in the narrow piece of space left on the couch, what which Dean having been sprawled across it. “What time is it?”

“Four in the morning, almost.”

“Why am I awake?” he glanced around, “where’s Sam?”

“He and Gabriel snuck upstairs a few hours ago, once you’d fallen asleep.”

“Son of a...was it him who put the popcorn in my nose?”

“....yes.”

“Bitch!” Dean exclaimed. He ran a hand over his face. “Fuck, I’m tired, where did we get up to?”

“I kept watching, and I’ve just finished Princess and the Frog.”

“Nearly at the end huh?”

“I actually found one we missed...but...” Castiel glanced at the laptop, which they’d propped up on a chair.

“What?”

“It’s from the eighties I think, and it’s not a cartoon.”

Dean squinted at the screen. “Dude, what the fuck is that?”

“It’s a horror film, ‘The Watcher in the Woods’? I found it on google.” He had a pillow clasped in his lap, Dean now realised.

“Cas...did you wake me up because you got scared?”

“....no.”

“Mmmmhmmm,” Dean grumbled as he pulled himself into a sitting position and picked a beer up from the floor. “Well, hit play. I won’t let some Disney monster get you.”

Castiel started the movie from the beginning, clutching the pillow to his chest. Dean sighed, figured he’d be watching Disney horror with Captain Amish von Scardypuss while Private Amish el Bastido violated his kid brother.

Ten minutes in, he was heavily revaluating his own tolerance levels for fear.

“What the fucking fuck!” He couldn’t open his eyes any wider, but he tried anyway, his eyebrows meeting his hairline, “Don’t go in the...why would you do that?!”

“I don’t know,” Castiel had one hand on the cushion, the other arm firmly twined around Dean’s. “I told you it was scary.”

“I thought you were being a nerd.”

“I grew up without electric lighting! I can handle being scared.” Castiel hissed.

On screen, the main chick screamed and both of them jumped.

Castiel buried his face in Dean’s upper arm. “Oh God, turn it off. I can’t take it.”

Dean looked longingly at the pause button. “It might anger it.”

Castiel squeezed his eyes shut. “Tell me when it’s over.”

By the time the credits rolled, Castiel was plastered to Dean’s side, their legs intertwined. Both of them were watching through their fingers.

“Hey, what’re you watching?”

Both of them jumped, and Dean threw them both off of the couch, to the safety of the floor.

Gabriel watched them struggle upright with amusement. “If I’d known you wanted some alone time I would have taken Sam upstairs sooner.”

“Shut up,” Dean said, pulling his shirt straight, “it was a scary movie.”

“By Disney?” Gabriel said, eyeing the credits.

Castiel pointed at him threateningly. “I will make you watch it.”

“No thanks, too busy being a grown up and having sex,” Gabriel rolled his eyes, “I suggest you watch something less ‘terrifying’ before bed, wouldn’t want you having an accident now would we?”

“I wasn’t the bed wetter.” Castiel said, confused, “I think that was Michael.”

Gabriel shrugged. “Whatever, I’m going back upstairs to do grown up things with your brother.” He held up a can of miracle whip, “I only came down for this.”

He was gone before Dean had finished formulating his comeback.

“Well, I am going to bed,” Castiel sighed, stretching, “come on.”

“Sure...what?”

Castiel gave him a look, “I’m not going down there alone, there could be anything in that basement.”

“You’re a baby.”

Castiel shrugged. “You’re gonna feel bad when I get eaten.”

Dean walked past him to the hallway and threw open the basement door, “Come on then.”

Castiel slipped past him into the narrow doorway and started down the stairs. Dean followed him. It was dark and still in the basement, and he lost Castiel in the shadows. A string of fairy lights, in the shape of pumpkins, came on over the plank and brick bookcase on the right side of the room.

Castiel stood up from where he’d been fiddling with the socket and stripped his shirt off.

Dean focused quickly on the lights. The fact that Castiel was only wearing dinosaur boxers hadn’t really mattered when he’d been scared out of his mind, but in the dim basement it was a bit more of an issue. He glanced over at the messed up bed and then quickly trained his eyes on the wall.

“You good?”

“Hmmm? Oh, I told you, I’m used to the dark.” Castiel tipped his head slightly. “I don’t get scared.”

Dean had the distinct feeling that there was a game going on, and he had neither the rule book, nor the layers of protective gear necessary. It felt dangerous.

“I’m uh...gonna get to bed.” He gestured over his shoulder, to the stares.

“Be careful, you know, in the dark.”

Castiel seemed to glow in the dark, and Dean found himself looking at him again, without meaning to.

“What was it like,” he asked, “being, Amish?”

“I still am,” Castiel shrugged, “just taking a brief vacation in the electric city.”

“Having fun?”

Castiel smiled, catlike. “It has its moments.”

He slipped the boxers off and stepped over to the bed, sliding under the duvet and settling against the purple headboard. “Night Dean.”

“Night Cas.”

Dean tripped twice on the stairs, but eventually made it to his room.

He’d just seen his first non-locker room, non-familial dick. It had effectively rendered all thoughts of sleep as pure speculation. Fucking hell, Castiel was weird, but somehow, Dean figured he wasn’t as weird as he was making out. There was something experimental about Castiel’s behaviour, testing, pushing at barriers that Dean only half understood.

Given the way Gabriel acted, Dean wondered what their family life had been like. Not that freeing, apparently. Still, he could hardly talk, when Sam was going to have to lie his ass off to Dad about what he was doing with said ass.

Ugh. That was another thing he didn’t want to think about.

He stripped off, got into bed and started the long process of tossing and turning that would eventually (hopefully) lead to sleep.  Halfway through the night he fell into a shallow, confused dream, and thought Castiel had come into his room, slid into his bed, cool as a fresh sheet and naked as Dean was.

He blinked awake at his own groan, cool air wrapped around him.

Awake to the silence of the sleeping house, Dean gets up, finds underwear, and picks up a tshirt and running pants.

If he can’t sleep, he might as well jog.

Outside the air is frosty, the street lights burning white, and he sets a steady pace along the winding concrete footpaths. Only halfway to the civics building does he remember the creepy ass movie he watched only a few hours ago. He ignores the leap of paranoia in his stomach. It was a stupid movie. He’s not scared.

At least until he hears movement in the bushes by the library.

Dean falters, stops, and peers into the shadows. It is not a creature from a freaking Disney horror flick, and even if it is, he can kick its fucking ass.

Just as he’s about to karate kick the bushes, or turn and run his ass home (he was still deciding) he hears a laugh, a familiar laugh. And then Castiel emerges from the hedge, in a slinky, black sequin dress and leans against the front pillar of the library.

And some dude in jeans and a tux jacket plasters himself against Castiel’s front. Their breath makes mist in front of their faces, that disappears as their mouths meet.

He’s not sure why he sprints back home, burning all his energy in a furious rush, or why he feels like Castiel’s been lying to him all evening.

He goes upstairs and lies down on the bed, damp and cold.

His sleep is, mercifully, dreamless. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the lack of updates, still working hard for my course and writing my novel :P but at the moment I'm on a ficcing spree.

His alarm goes off too fucking early.

Usually 7am is only ‘too early’ but today it is ‘too fucking early’ because he spent last night watching movies, being too paranoid about a scary movie to sleep, and finally, going for a run in the wet. All of which had robbed him of the sleep that he deserved as an unemployed student.

 Not to mention the unpleasantness of seeing Castiel sucking face with some drunk college dude.

Because, well, Cas can tongue fuck whoever he wants, and wherever and whenever, but...well, that doesn’t mean Dean wants to see it. See it right in front of his poor unsuspecting face. And after Cas had...Dean knows they he’s not crazy, Cas was definitely hitting on him the night before; snuggling up with him on the couch (though that movie had been scary as unwashed, hairy old man balls inhabited by satan), making him go down to his room with him, getting all up in his space, and then taking his clothes off -  that was him putting the moves on.

And Dean’s not gay, so obviously he doesn’t want to go there, but Castiel hit on him, then turned round a few hours later and got with some random dude. That’s just...impolite.

He gets up, showers away the grotty feeling of ‘not enough sleep’ and gets dressed for class. He only has his lame classes today, but on the plus side he’ll get to see Lisa and, who knows, maybe go back to her room for that ‘study session’.

He’s a really good mood as he goes downstairs and sidesteps the messy post-movie living room to get his breakfast. No sign of Castiel, and no sign of Sam or his boyfriend. That’s still weird for Dean to hear, even inside his own head. His brother has a boyfriend. And that boyfriend is Gabriel. And that Gabriel has a mime fetish. And that mime fetishist is some kind of Amish escapee.

College was supposed to be the start of a normal life. Getting away from home and becoming an adult. It was not meant to go the way of a plot arc during a writer’s strike.

Oh well, at least he was still the regular one.

Sociology is as always, boring as painting a wall in the DMV, and afterwards Dean is almost too tired to get out of his seat so that the next class can be bored to tears while sitting uncomfortably on a plastic chair. But then Lisa appears at his elbow, smiling and wearing a little skirt and, it is so good to see someone in a skirt who was allowed to wear one.

“Hey,” she says, “Iwas wondering if you’d done the reading for next week?”

Dean hasn’t done the reading for last week. “Sure, yeah, it was really...interesting.”

Her smile widens. God she’s got a nice mouth, and pretty fucking white teeth. He feels like he should put on some shades.

“So, do you want to talk it over? Maybe with coffee?”

“Sure.”

As it turns out, coffee is code for, a brown caffeinated beverage brewed from beans and served in a paper cup. Still, they take it back to Lisa’s dorm and he ends up sitting on her fluffy yellow bedspread, in a room that doesn’t smell like Gabriel’s latest concoction of grilled sugar and Doritos, or Ash’s hot and dusty modems. It’s floral, powdery, definitely feminine. And Lisa takes off her sweater before she sits down, showing off some pretty awesome cleavage in a little camisole.

What takes his attention however, is the black leather bra hanging over the desk chair.

“Planning for Halloween already?” he asks, unable to take his eyes off it because it’s so out of place in the girly ‘I have Katy Perry posters and stuffed animals’ room.

“Oh no, that’s for this party my off campus friends are having tonight,” she smiles, bites her lip a little, “sounds like it’s going to get pretty wild. They...uh...told me to bring somebody, I was going to ask you after class but, I kind of wussed out.”

If there is a God, he is on Dean’s side, and this, this is all the proof he needs.

“Sure, where is it?”

“Well, if you pick me up at nine, I can show you,” she grins, then taps the sociology book that he’d forgotten that he was holding, “now, we really should study.”

He leaves that study session with excitement leaping in his veins, and a low level pang of arousal that has him in a very good mood by the time he gets back to the house.

“Oh God, who is she?” Sam asks, the moment he walks into the kitchen and finds Dean grinning into a roast beef sandwich.

“What?”

“You have your ‘I’m gonna get laid’ face on.”

“This is just my normal face,” Dean smirks, “because, I am always about to get laid. Just so happens that tonight I’m gonna get laid at a kinky party. There’s a leather bra involved.”

“You mean a bustier?”

Dean gives his sandwich a look. “Can you believe we’re related?”

“Are you...talking to your sandwich about me?”

“Well there’s no one else I can talk to about you, I mean you’ve boned a third of the guys we live with, Ash never comes out of his room, and the less I see of Cas, the better.”

Sam frowns. “I thought you two ‘bonded’ last night. Gabriel said you two looked pretty cosy.”

He is going to kill Gabriel with an ice pick and a can opener. Slowly.

“Yeah, well, he’s just a little weird for me. Besides, after the movie I think he was hitting on me.”

“You always think everyone’s hitting on you. The lady at the admissions office, our TA, those girls that hand out free yoghurt at the mall, The Dean...”

“Hey, she’s a cougar, I know that for a fact. She slept with one of the seniors last year.”

“You read that on a bathroom wall, didn’t you?”

“Hey, just because it’s next to a picture of a dick wearing a top hat and a monocle doesn’t mean it’s not reliable information.”

“I’m pretty sure that if you look up ‘unreliable information’ that is the sentence you will see.”

“Says Mr ‘I trust Wikipedia to teach me about kissing’.”

Sam turns beet red. “Stay off my laptop.”

“Hey, you left me alone with it. Your mistake.” Dean takes a triumphant bite of sandwich. “Anyway, I’m going to this party, and I have no idea what it’s gonna be like, or how weird it’s going to be. Leather bra aside there aren’t that many clues...so, what do I take?”

“You mean in terms of wine for the host?” Sam said.

“In terms of, am I going to need condoms, or will they be passing them out like mardi gras beads?”

Sam sighed. “Take some.”

“OK then, that’s my planning done.”

“What are you going to wear?”

Dean frowned. “Hi Sam, I’m a dude, where have you been for the last 20 years?”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Whatever. Just, don’t make too much noise when you get in, and if you bring back a traffic cone or a trash can I will make you raise it as your own.”

“Yeah well, when Gabriel knocks you up and dumps you for a bar tender I’m not coming to visit you in your double-wide out behind the Texaco. I will however buy you a housedress and a set of pretty pink hair curlers,” he squints at Sam’s hair, which had been looking a lot more styled recently, “unless you already own some that is.”

“It’s called grooming.”

“It’s called being a girl.”

“OK, well, while I’m here ‘being a girl’ you try not to get herpes or the clap from your new friend, Gabriel told me she kind of gets around.”

“And how would he know?”

“Because he already slept with her.”

Dean grimaced. “Please let that be a joke.”

“He seemed serious...he doesn’t actually joke that much about sex.”

Dean puts his sandwich down, no longer hungry. “Great. Now I’m gonna be thinking about second-hand fucking my brother.”

“EW!”

“Don’t get mad at me, it’s biology, I don’t make the rules.”

“The rules of second-hand fucking? The made up rules that you just made up?”

“Shove it.”

 


	7. tw: sexual assault (mild)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is no earthly way of knowing  
> Where the fuck this fic is going

It’s a blackout party.

Dean has never heard of a ‘blackout party’ before, but to be honest, the theme is simple to divine: the house is ‘blacked out’ with drapes and all the lights left off, apart from a trail of glowsticks that mark out a safe path across the floor, and an arrow made up of glow in the dark stars that points to the bathroom.

Dean hasn’t changed his clothes from the henley and jeans he put on that morning, but when he meets Lisa he hardly recognises her, her hair’s all curled and she’s wearing bright red lipstick, the leather bra and a little skirt covered in gold sequins. He has to wonder about the wisdom of dressing up for a party in the dark, but then, if it makes her feel good, who cares who else can see it?

There are indeed so many condoms around he might as well have not bothered bringing any, not to mention the furry handcuffs, silky blindfolds and bottles of booze on every surface, not that he can see any of it once the door closes behind them. They’re swallowed up into the darkness, the thump of something that Dean is sure was auto tuned to within an inch of its life, and the unsteady motion of about twenty bodies spread out over the floor and over the shadowy couches and armchairs.

Lisa pulls him forward  by the hand, leading him to a space on a sofa against the back wall, steering him into the seat, she squeezes up next to him and dangles a strip of black fabric in front of his face.

“So Dean...how open minded are you?”

Honestly? Not very. He’s always been a bit, squirrelly about the weird and wonderful world of fetish. Not that he hasn’t experimented a little, he has Rhonda to thank for _that_ , but he’s genuinely worried about what might be on the couch he’s sitting on.

He prays to God no one turns on a black light.

“Uh...what did you have in- oh.”

Lisa ties the blindfold around his head, so that he loses the faint shadows he’s been adjusting to since he walked in.

“Now, wait, right, here...and I’ll be back with a drink,” Lisa whispers, and her weight disappears from his side.

OK, he’s a little into this.

He’s even more into it when she comes back and straddles his lap, her slight weight balanced on his thighs, holding a bottle of beer up to his mouth. He takes a swallow, feels the bottle being taken away, hears her take a drink from it and set it aside on a nearby table. Her hands settle on his shoulders, brushing over the fabric of his shirt and rubbing at the base of his neck. He tips his head back, feels her breath on his throat. A heavy, warm feeling, carried from his chest to every extremity by the beat of his heart, he shifts his hips up, but the weight in his lap slides away the more he tries to bring it closer, until she’s gone entirely, and her weight settles on the couch next to him.

“Shy all of a sudden?” he says, because he’s seen two sides to Lisa already, and he’s willing to bet that this is some kind of game to her. A game that he can fully get on board with. When she doesn’t do more than shift in her seat, he reaches over and gropes for her hand, finding it up on the headrest, where she’s leaning over him.

“Is this OK?” inching it down to his crotch, where he can feel his jeans getting tighter.

In answer, the cautious fingers curl over the bulge in his inseam, rubbing lightly. Dean bucks his hips up a little, letting a long breath out as her hand explores him.

“Dean?” Lisa says.

Lisa says from some distance away.

Lisa says _from a different room entirely_.

Dean jumps, pushes hard at the body next to him. “What the hell?”

But the weight next to him is gone, the heat of a body on the couch the only sign it had been there at all, that, and the fact that his semi is still pinned by his jeans, throbbing for touch.

He rips the blindfold off.

“You OK?” Lisa sits next to him, holding a glass of fruity alcohol.

“I’m...” Dean struggles to his feet, “I’m gonna go. Sorry, I just...have to go.”

Stumbling over the glow stick trail he reaches the door, bursts out into the night, refreshingly lit by streetlamps. He takes a deep breath, and immediately finds himself heading in the direction of home.

Whoever it was, whoever was, touching him - they could be anywhere, still at the party, or out here with him. He’s not scared, hell he’d put whoever’s hand on his crotch hadn’t he? OK, so he’d thought it was Lisa but, still.

Fuck, he doesn’t know. He just wants to get home and get the taste of beer out of his mouth. Get the smell of old furniture and incense off of his skin. Even his clothes smell funny, he keeps catching a whiff of...something. A sickly smell that makes him think off....kiwis.

Fucking...that bastard.

He starts to run, and stumbles into the house at almost midnight. From the looks of things, everyone is asleep, there aren’t any lights on. Catching his breath, he lets himself into the basement and takes the stairs in the dark.

Castiel’s bed is empty.

Sighing, he sits down on the floor just under the stairs, prepared to wait it out. He’s sure now that it was Castiel that climbed into his lap, felt him out and then ran off. He was right, Cas was hitting on him before, and now, now he knows what it’s like to have him near him, on him, his breath on his skin.

A shiver makes him jerk against the wall. God, he can remember his hand on his dick.

It is several hours before Castiel finally comes tripping down the stairs. By that time Dean has found and flicked through a stack of computer magazines, fiddled with some stray coins and a paperclip from the floor, and made a start on a novel about wizards that was wedged under the chest of drawers.

When Castiel comes down the stairs, his first impulse is to leap up and start making accusations, but the fact that Castiel is talking to himself kind of gives him pause for thought.

“...fucking stupid asshole,” Castiel is saying under his breath, quite unlike anything else Dean has ever heard him say, “what the fuck were you thinking you...fuck.”

He’s going to the chest of drawers, pulling out a cardboard shoebox and emptying it out onto the floor. Two plastic baggies fall out, one full of coloured pills, the other of shaggy brownish-green weed. Castiel is shaking his head, muttering too quietly for Dean to hear, picks up the bags and goes to the little bathroom in the corner, shielded by a screen.

Dean hears the plink, plink of pills being dropped into the toilet, the sudden rush of the cistern as they’re flushed away.

Castiel comes back, drops the empty bags onto the floor and takes a glass pipe from his bedside table, he wraps it in one of the baggies and stamps on it until it’s crushed into dust. Leaving it on the floor, he collapses on his bed, staring at the ceiling, with both hands over his face he makes a sound of extreme agitation.

Dean isn’t sure what he’s watching, but he can grasp that Cas just tossed his stash and broke his pipe, and that he’s pretty pissed at himself. So...he felt bad? About the whole, groping thing? Caught in his hiding place he keeps very still. He isn’t so sure he wants to confront him after all, it would be so much simpler if he could go to his room and pretend the whole thing never happened.

Inching forward, he makes a break for the bottom of the stairs, only to be stopped short by the sound of his name.

“Dean?”

He turns, finds Castiel sitting up, looking at him in mingled confusion and horror. “What are you doing down here?”

“I uh...nothing.” He shrugs, “just...wanted to see if you were home, guess I fell asleep waiting for you to come back.”

“...why?”

“Just to see if you got home safe,” it’s a lame lie and he knows it, “were you at a party or something?”

Castiel avoids his eyes. “I was...um...out.”

“Have fun?”

Castiel’s lips form a thin, quavery line. He shakes his head.

There’s an edge to Dean’s voice when he says, “How come?”

“I...” Castiel turns his face away, “I was at a party, and...I must’ve been out of it, I don’t even remember what happened, only that I had this blindfold on and...I, fuck, I think I did something bad, because I remember someone shoving me off and shouting.”

Dean just looks at him. He doesn’t remember? Is he lying? ‘cause if he is, he’s doing it really, really convincingly.

“Probably nothing.” Dean says.

“But it wasn’t, I know that. I wouldn’t feel this bad if it was ‘nothing’.” Castiel is obviously upset, Dean’s only just noticing the mud on his jeans, on his hands from where he must’ve fallen. There’s a dark mark on his face, bits of gravel embedded in a cut there. “I’ve been so...fucking careless, so high lately that I could have done anything.” He gestures helplessly with his grazed hands, “This is why I left home? Why I came out into the world? To do awful things and then not remember them?”

It’s on the tip of Dean’s tongue to say, ‘It was me. I shoved you. And it was a bad thing but not as bad as you think.’ Because he’s sure now, Castiel isn’t lying. Isn’t trying to exonerate himself, he genuinely doesn’t remember the last few hours. And Dean can’t bring himself to say anything, because he doesn’t want anyone to know.

“It’s probably nothing...you were just, you know, making out with someone and they got all...skittish. You stopped right? I mean, they pushed you, you left alone. That’s the right thing dude.”

“But I don’t know if that’s what happened.”

“Well, until morning you won’t know for sure, just got to wait and see if anyone’s reported something to campus security. You’re probably worrying about nothing.”

Castiel doesn’t move, and his expression of devastation doesn’t change.

“Why don’t we get you cleaned up, and later on, when it’s actually day out, and you’ve sobered up, we can deal, alright?” Maybe then he’ll say something, when Castiel is clear headed and less of a mess.

He goes over to the bed, takes Castiel’s elbow and leads him cautiously to the bathroom to wash his face and hands. The gravel pieces are the worst of it, and Dean has to pull them with tweezers from the first aid kit that’s hanging on the wall. When he steers Castiel back in the direction of the bed, Castiel settles on it and looks up at him, his eyes still a little glassy, but mostly just shamed and grateful.

“Thank you Dean.”

“For what?”

“For being a friend...I don’t really have any, I feel that, if I did, they would have stopped me sooner.”

“Hey, it’s college, you’re allowed to experiment, and it’s not like you ODed next to a dead hooker. ”

“It might be worse than that.”

Dean swallows down the painful knowledge that he’s going to have to tell Castiel that he’s the bad thing he did. He can’t lie about it; it wasn’t a big deal, it isn’t even as bad as Castiel thinks, but it’s going to make the memory of tonight so much worse for the guy.

“Get some sleep,” is what he says.

By the time he gets to his own bed, Dean is wishing wholeheartedly that he’d never opened the door to being ‘friends’ with Castiel -  because it makes everything so much worse.


End file.
